“Whether there is or is not a Northwest regional style of architecture is debatable,” said John Yeon in 1986, “but what is certain is that lot of people want to think there is.”
— Places Journal

In "A Fortuitous Shadow," Keith Eggener is inspired by the Portland Art Museum's recent exhibition on John Yeon's life and legacy to explore the concept of regionalism in architecture, beginning with the doubts expressed by the architect long associated with Pacific Northwest regional modernism. View full entry

Today's Editor's Picks is a special themed "place based" edition - highlighting content (old/newish) from the archives/site - about Denver and Colorado. Partly as an apology for the brief/unexpected lull in the Picks. Also, inspired by my own recent relocation to The Mile High City. Just one part of an ongoing attempt to learn about my new home.

While MArch students at the University of Colorado, Denver, Patrick Beseda and Lacy Williams realized a design/build project for a micro-dwelling. FOUNDhouse inspired by the WikiHouse project, was an exploration of digital fabrication, the possibilities of DIY and the democratization of... View full entry

The architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre’s extravagant urban mansions in El Alto, Bolivia, have been derided as kitschy-looking cohetillos, meaning “spaceships”—giving his work the nickname “spaceship architecture.”

But the admirers of Freddy Mamani, as he is generally known, say his colorful “new Andean” style has also served to reinvent a city once aesthetically monochromatic, and that he has found a way to bring traditional Andean and Tiwanaku cultures into an urban setting.
— qz.com

Architecture, however, is a social art, rather than a personal one, a reflection of a society and its values rather than a medium of individual expression. So it’s a problem when the prevailing trend is one of franchises, particularly those of the globe-trotters: Renzo, Rem, Zaha and Frank.

It’s exciting to bring high-powered architects in from outside... But in the long run it’s wiser to nurture local talent; instead of starchitects, locatects.
— tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com

For more than a century, [Helsinki] has funded its own statistics bureaus to keep data on the population, businesses, building permits, and most other things you can think of. [...]

Helsinki and three of its neighboring cities are now banding together... Through an entity called Helsinki Region Infoshare, they are bringing together their data so that a fuller picture of the metro area can come into view.
— citiscope.org

As city governments become stronger drivers of infrastructural change, and the idea of a "connected city" becomes imminent, cities must learn how to manage and wield the vast amount of data collected. Parallel developments in city demographics, creating stronger links between cities within a... View full entry